MOSCOW, APRIL 6, 2004 (RIA NOVOSTI) - Issues concerning the restitution of German art treasures taken to Russia as trophies during the Second World War should be decided jointly by the Ministries of Culture & Media, Justice, and Foreign Affairs, Culture Minister Alexander Sokolov said at a press conference on the RIA premises Tuesday.
Sokolov revealed to the reporters that he had recently met with the German Ambassador to discuss the possibility of returning Peter Paul Rubens' "Tarquin and Lucretia" and the artworks that Russian architect Viktor Baldin had taken from a Nazi castle during WWII and handed to Moscow's Architecture Museum several years later.
In Sokolov's opinion, the Germans tend to view art trophy restitution as a number of isolated cases, with each to be tackled separately. The Russian minister, by contrast, believes that the problem should be considered in its entirety.
"The only thing I promised [to the German side] personally was to address this problem with German meticulousness," Sokolov remarked.
